Well, the steady unimpeded progress in my recovery has hit a temporary snag.

Earlier this month, I went to see a specialist at the University of Virginia, who is The Dude (or one of the recognized Illuminati in the field, anyways) in the two genetic connective-tissue disorders that 5-10% of aortic dissections are directly attributable to.  These ( Read more... )

Some of you got this enclosed with a Christmas card.  I figured it summed up our year pretty well, so I'm posting it here.

Michael

Well, it was a busy damn year. Maybe not as historically significant as any given year during, say, World War Two, but plenty busy from our point of view.

January started off with a big event, albeit one that we had ( Read more... )

So, Morgan (the four year-old one that lives at my house, not the be-Laurelled Athenry one) is sitting in front of the TV watching "Little Bear" or somesuch, and I am attempting to mess with her.   I am spinning a pretty good riff (IMO) off a very interesting discussion we had last week when I was helping her with her bath regarding "the butt- ( Read more... )

I mess with my oldest daughter's head occasionally.  I can't help it.  I'll be minding my own business, and suddenly find myself in the middle of messing with her brain, like happened yesterday evening ( Read more... )

Like Douglas MacArthur and an NSF check, I have returned.

During my Medical Misadventure, (also known as The Recent Unpleasantness) I was obliged to spend almost a month in ICU's.  Damned unpleasant places they are, too.  The staff within were almost invariably nice.  The places themselves suck however, from the patient's point of view.

The thing ( Read more... )

 I'm in Jacksonville, FL for the rest of the week, attending training.  Supervisor training, as the Marshals Service attempts to pull itself into the modern era by providing professional development classes to all hands along the management/supervisory food chain.  I've been a supervisory-grade employee for five years now, so I guess it was just a ( Read more... )

Well, that's what I'm feeling like.

As part of my ongoing drive to re-enter the SCA life of arms, I tried to strap a new shield this last weekend.  Hah.  It is to laugh.

Surprisingly, even though I have over 3 decades experience at this sort of thing, the project sort of went to shit in a handbasket, and seems to be intent on staying there.

There are ( Read more... )

With the move and the new house and all, I've curtailed my work travel considerably, in favor of bring my victims here to D.C. for interviewing.  Unfortunately, those cases where I have to go to the affected District and interview several (or in one upcoming case, about 25) people have sort of stacked up, so spousal objections aside, I have to get ( Read more... )

Tomorrow morning, May 31, 2008 at about 8:00am PST, will mark the twentieth anniversary of my entry into the armed profession of law enforcement.  That's when me and 84 other recruits in LAPD Academy Class 5-88 raised our hands and took the oath on our first morning of the Academy.

Sometime during that hectic first week of the Academy, the police ( Read more... )

 Yeah, I did.  The smacking upside the head thing, I mean-- and I'm very embarrassed ( Read more... )